page_title: Spanish Canadians
section_title: Spanish claims and presence in Canada
hierarchical_section_title: Spanish Canadians / History / Spanish claims and presence in Canada
caption_attribution_description: Colonial demarcation lines between Castille/Spain and Portugal in the 15th and 16th Centuries. (Treaty of Tordesillas and Treaty of Saragossa)
context_page_description: Spanish Canadians are Canadians of full or partial Spanish heritage or people who hold a European Union citizenship from Spain as well as one from Canada.
  The laws in Spain limit who may be granted Spanish citizenship from Latin America to parents and grandparents who once held Spanish citizenship. More recently the legal system in Spain has granted citizenship to Cubans who can prove that their grandparents immigrated to Cuba during the Spanish Civil War.
context_section_description: Spain had land claims to all of Canada since Christopher Columbus claimed the New World for Spain on October 12, 1492. Through the Treaty of Tordesillas signed June 7, 1494 the Pope Alexander VI divided the New World between Spain and Portugal. Portugal received the eastern portion of Brazil and Spain received the rest, which included Canada.(see Treaty of Tordesillas)
  Later the Spanish conquistador and explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa became the first European to see and stand in the waters of the eastern shore of the Pacific Ocean. He accomplished this feat after an arduous trek through the jungles of what is now Panama. Once there  Balboa with raised hands, his sword in one and a standard with the image of the Virgin Mary in the other, he walked knee-deep into Ocean, and claimed possession of the Pacific Ocean and all adjoining lands (which included British Columbia) for Spain in the name of his Spanish sovereigns on September 13, 1513.
  Then a Greek born Spanish explorer Juan de Fuca in the service of the king of Spain, Philip II, explored the Strait of Anián in 1592, now known as the Strait of Juan de Fuca, between Vancouver Island, now part of British Columbia, Canada and northwestern Washington state, United States.
  People from northwestern Spain known as Basques have been landing in Newfoundland since the late 14th century to dry their cod fish, which they caught in the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. By 1578 Anthony Parkhurst, a merchant, explorer, and advocate of English settlement in Newfoundland, was able to count over 100 Spanish vessels at Newfoundland, all seeking cod. In contrast, the level of English activity during this period was quite small - Parkhurst claimed that in 1573 there were only four English vessels at Newfoundland.
caption: Lines dividing the non-Christian world between Castille (modern Spain) and Portugal: the 1494 Tordesillas meridian (purple) and the 1529 Zaragoza antimeridian (green)
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